Racecraft 101: When To Be Patient vs When To Attack

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Updated on 18 October 2026.

What do you think is more important to winning a race, having the ultimate pace in terms of lap times or having the ultimate racecraft? Most of the drivers I talk to and I coach at BabyRace and also here at Senndit think that the pace is the key.

Yes, you’ve got to have the pace. Pace comes first. But unless you’re doing a time trial, like they do in cycling, the pace is just part of the equation. What’s going to massively affect your results is the racecraft. And a big part of racecraft is understanding exactly when to be patient versus when to attack.

Is pace or racecraft more important to win a kart race?

Let’s suppose you have the best pace on the track and you start P1 from pole. But in the first lap, already into turn one, you make a poor start, too conservative. The driver starting P2 overtakes you on the outside, then the driver starting P3 goes past right away, because you are not defending properly in the first lap. People are not going to follow you because you have the pace.

They don’t give a crap.

And at international level, WSK or CIK races, the first two, three laps your pace doesn’t really matter, because your tyres are not even up to temperature. The pace normally starts to appear from lap three onwards. So even with two, three tenths of advantage on everybody else, you still need great racecraft to come through lap one in P1.

The speed can get you on pole. To win, it’s a totally different thing. How to get through the start itself is in my race start strategies.

Why are kart races more aggressive than they used to be?

It’s like war out there. If you’re not ready to race and you’re not ready to fight, you’re going to get eaten by the whole field. Having the pace is not enough. You may be lucky every once in a while that the group starts to fight in the back and you can pull away on pure pace.

But I see that nowadays the races are getting more and more racy. More elbows out, more aggressive. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago you still had to have really good racecraft, but I think there was more of a chance to pull away.

Now the races are really becoming more like a wrestling game. More like a war zone.

Can you be patient and attack at the same time?

No. Sometimes you need to be in patient mode, sometimes you need to be in attack mode. You can’t be both at the same time. Patiently attacking, no, that doesn’t exist.

You’ve got to place your bets properly. And most of the time, as you’ll see, the bet is to attack.

When does being patient pay off in a kart race?

Here’s an example. I’m going to follow this driver for just one lap, pushing him around, bumper drafting. That could be in 60 Mini, so that we pull away from the rest of the field behind. We collaborate. This is not a team sport, this is an individualistic sport, but if we collaborate we’re probably both better off by doing so.

We go together for one or two laps. Then once I see there’s enough gap, I get to the front, I set my own pace, and if I drive well enough I can pull away. That’s using your patience to your advantage.

Even if you feel you’re quicker than the driver in front, you may need to use him like this, because your goal is to pull away from the others and secure yourself P1 or P2, worst case scenario. But this bumper drafting normally happens in Mini, sometimes in juniors, and rarely in other categories.

How long should you wait behind a slower driver?

Not long. You don’t have the luxury of being patient many times, I would say most of the times. You have to take decisions really quickly and you have to be very aggressive. So in racing it’s more about attacking than being patient.

When you have more pace and you’re closing up to a driver, you just need to pass him, period, at the first occasion. Unless there’s a really strategic reason, like building a gap from the drivers behind.

Because most of the time, if you wait, you start to settle in the rhythm of the driver in front. And his rhythm is normally a slower pace. On top of that, in the summer, if you wait one, two, three laps behind him without making the overtake, you’re going to overheat everything, the tyres, the engine. So you also have less performance from your kart.

So yes, be patient enough to set up the overtake where the risk is not too high. But don’t wait too much. Take the chance when you are close enough. The move itself, step by step, is in how to overtake in a go-kart.

When is attacking just impatience?

Patience still matters. You have to really balance patience and aggression. Think about it like going to a casino. You take your bets only on the high probability occasions. If you recklessly bet on everything, for sure you come out of the casino with zero in your pockets.

So trying to make an overtake from like 20 karts behind because you feel like it, that’s just reckless behaviour. Be patient, close up the gap to the driver in front, and once you’ve closed up the gap, you pass him.

Of course in some moments you have to be a little bit in a hurry and make a move, because in that moment it’s the best thing to do. It requires a bit of courage, and yes, there may be a chance of crashing. If the bet can give you a win or a podium, it’s worth it. But if you do it when it’s not needed, simply because you’re impatient, you’re going to scrub your race.

I talk more about balancing the two in when to overtake versus when to defend.

Why is hesitation the enemy when you attack?

When you have to attack, you attack. No second thoughts. Because every hesitation is going to reduce massively the likelihood of you making that move, of you defending that position, of you driving through the pack in lap one, turn one.

Hesitation is normally the enemy of racing. When you take a decision, it’s a split second decision. It’s mostly instinctual. I don’t think about it when I’m racing. I’m driven by my instincts.

And you can train your instincts. You can program yourself by doing visualization, by studying race videos, by creating a lot of muscle memory in your driving, in your actions and also in your decision making. What a hesitation looks like when it turns into a move is in why half moves kill your race.

Is every overtake in karting a gamble?

A bit, yes. I see racing really like taking the right bets. Every time you go for an overtake you are leaving a safe zone, a comfort zone where it’s safe to stay in your position. Overtaking puts you in danger mode, because you never know whether the driver in front is going to notice you.

You can do the overtake properly. You take the right measurements, the right positioning, everything. But maybe the driver in front has not enough lateral vision. He’s too focused in front of him, he doesn’t see you coming in his peripheral vision, he turns into you and you crash. And maybe you would have been better off not to overtake.

Or you overshoot the braking, you misjudge your calculations a little bit, and you drive onto the nassau panel of the driver in front, or into his side. There’s always going to be a risk whenever you make an overtake.

How many contacts are acceptable when you go for overtakes?

I always prefer drivers to overtake, and I always prefer drivers to take risks. Of course you will always have some crashes here and there. Out of 20 overtakes, maybe you get one contact. It’s possible. But maybe those 19 overtakes give you the win, give you podiums, give you championships.

So it’s way better to take the risk. Overtaking is risk taking. Racecraft is risk taking. And you’ve got to really choose which bets to take.

How do you choose which overtakes to go for?

It’s a bit like gambling, like a casino. I’m not a gambler, I’m not into that thing, thankfully. But professional poker players can’t just randomly choose where to put their chips. They put their bets on a high probability outcome, where they are confident it’s going to result in a win.

Same in karting. Same in all sorts of racing. Whenever you go for a move, you’ve got to have the confidence you’re going to make it work.

So you overtake whenever you feel there’s a high probability of making the move stick, and that probability is going to offset the risk.

Where does the name Senndit come from?

Of course, sometimes you’re going to go for dive bombs. Real lunges, proper sends. That is my speciality and I love to do that, especially when we had front brakes, you could really send it from far away.

And that’s, by the way, where the name Senndit came from. That’s where the brand came from. The idea of taking the risk and just sending it. Not being afraid of making mistakes, and just launching it, dive bombing it.

But a send is still a bet. It’s really quick decision making, and you want to understand whether it has a high chance of working or not.

What happens if you never go for the overtake?

If you do not shoot, you will get shot. You can’t feel like, oh, poor him. In war there’s no mercy. And in racing too, if you are not overtaking when you’re supposed to, you are going to get overtaken by the drivers behind.

The mid pack is super, super fierce. But even the front of the pack is fierce. Even the back of the pack. So you’ve got to really understand that if you’re not shooting, you’re going to get shot. If you’re not passing, you’re going to get passed.

How aggressive should you be without being reckless?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying go full kamikaze. There’s a fine line between being aggressive and being dangerous.

A real racer knows how to push without crossing that line. You don’t want penalties, nosecone drops or wrecks. But you also don’t want to be the guy everyone overtakes easily.

You want to build a reputation like this: “If I try to pass this guy, I’d better be 100% sure, or he’ll shut the door.” That’s respect. That’s racing authority.

I’ve been on both sides. When I first started, I was fast, clean, precise, consistent. But sometimes I got bullied. Drivers knew they could push me wide and I’d back off.

At one race, I finally snapped. I stopped being polite. I went elbows out, took control of the inside, fought hard for every inch. And you know what? I didn’t crash. I didn’t get penalties. I got results.

That day I learned something huge: you also need to be tough. That combination, speed plus aggression, is what wins races. So be firm, not foolish.

Why is attacking the best defence in karting?

Sometimes you’ll have to send it. Sometimes it’s not going to work, but probably most of the time it will work. And you’ve got to take those bets.

What do you do with a driver behind you and one in front?

You need what I call situational awareness, which is basically understanding what’s happening around you. Say you have someone behind who’s about to overtake you. In a split second you decide: I’ve got to pass the driver in front, even though he’s a bit far. I’ve got to send it. Because if I’m not overtaking the guy in front, the guy behind is going to overtake me.

If I just defend without trying to overtake the driver in front, it’s probably silly. I let the driver in front pull away, and the driver behind is not going to disappear.

Isn’t defending the patient option?

No. Defending is a very short term decision that many kids forget. If you defend once, you’ve got to defend the next corner, and the next one, and you go slower, so the driver behind is not going to disappear.

There are moments when it makes sense, for example holding your place on the first lap when you run low tyre pressures and you always struggle in the first laps. But that’s the exception. What defending every lap costs you, and what to do when a faster driver catches you, is in why defending too much is a losing strategy in karting. When you do have to defend, the technique is in how to defend a position in a kart race.

What is the best way to learn racecraft?

By watching races. Not only your races. Re-watching your own races is good when you can, but unfortunately you can’t have onboard videos during races in Europe. Only in the US. In America you can do that, which is great for them, but in Europe it’s not allowed, which is a very big pity, because you could learn way more.

What should you watch if you have no onboard footage?

Watch the videos from past races on YouTube. Watch videos from other drivers, if they have a YouTube channel with some race videos. But besides that, I suggest you just go out there and watch the races of the other categories.

And don’t only watch. Try to understand, try to predict, try to guess what the drivers are going to do. By doing so you build a memory of all the actions, a proper database, that you will then be able to reuse whenever you go out on track.

How did Max Verstappen and I learn racecraft?

That’s how I used to learn. That’s how Max Verstappen, all those guys, used to learn. We used to finish our session, do the brief with our mechanic, give proper feedback to the tuner, clean our karts, watch the data. But then we would spend a lot of time watching the races of other categories, or the same category.

Back in the days in juniors we had just one single category, KF3, the junior category at international level. And we would drive against 110 or 120 drivers, even for Winter Cup races or for the FIA world championship races. You would have five, six or seven heats before the final on Sunday. So whenever you did not have your own heat, you could go and watch the other drivers from the same category. You study your competitors, and at the same time you learn about racecraft.

I see it’s still a practice nowadays. But many drivers are not doing this, and I am very upset when I suggest my drivers go and watch races and they don’t. That’s the easiest way to learn about racecraft.

Why do you learn racecraft by imitation?

You don’t have to take notes. You just watch the others driving and racing, and you absorb it. It’s going to be instinctual.

If you want to learn to be a piano player, you watch what your instructor is doing and you try to imitate him. Not only by watching him, but also by trying to do what he did. And by doing so, if you repeat it over and over again, you become a piano player. Repetition is key.

Obviously you also learn by racing, let’s be honest, that’s where you learn the most. But if you can’t race every day, learn by watching other drivers. Whether you are at the track watching another category, or other races from your own category, you’re going to absorb massively.

That is the way you absorb racecraft. That is the number one way. More of it is in the racecraft guides, and if you want to work on all of this with me over a season, that’s my six month training program.

Frequently asked questions

When should you be patient in a kart race?

When patience buys you something specific. For example bumper drafting the driver in front for one or two laps in 60 Mini, so the two of you pull away from the pack, or closing up the gap before you try a move. Most of the time you don’t have that luxury, and you attack.

Should you pass a slower driver straight away?

When you have more pace and you’re closing up, pass him at the first occasion. If you wait one, two, three laps behind him you settle into his slower rhythm, and in the summer you overheat the tyres and the engine.

Is it worth risking a crash to overtake?

Out of 20 overtakes, maybe you get one contact. The other 19 can give you wins, podiums and championships. Take the bets with a high probability of the move sticking, not every bet.

Why is racecraft more important than pace in karting?

Pace gets you pole, but at WSK or CIK level the tyres are not up to temperature in the first two, three laps and the pace normally starts to appear from lap three. If you are too conservative into turn one, the drivers behind go past and they don’t care that you are faster.

How do you learn racecraft?

By watching races, your own and the other categories, and trying to predict what the drivers are going to do. Then you imitate it and repeat it, and on track it becomes instinctual.

And if you want to find some lap time today, send me your onboard. I get back to you with a proper breakdown of where you can find lap time in an onboard video analysis.